The Other Side of Silence: Men's Lives & Gay Identities - A Twentieth-Century History [Paperback]

John Loughery (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 15, 1999

Based on hundreds of interviews, new and classic texts, and little-known archival sources, an award-winning writer offers the first narrative history to consider the multiple meanings of "gay identity" in the whole United States.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The writing of gay history has been a relatively recent invention. Starting with such books as Jonathan Ned Katz's Gay American History (1976), Arthur Evans's Witchcraft and the Gay Counter Culture (1978), and Lillian Faderman's Surpassing the Love of Men (1981), gay and lesbian historians have charted both the presence of gay men and women in the world as well as their influence upon it. John Loughery's The Other Side of Silence builds on this foundation to great effect. Books of gay history (dealing with enormous amounts of new material to interpret) have tended to discuss politics and culture as separate concepts, and the complicated interrelationships between the two have often been confusingly contradictory. Loughery has pieced together--using the work of such historians as Katz, Alan Berube, John D'Emilio, and George Chauncy--a highly readable survey of eight decades of gay male life that knits together the political and the cultural. He is thus able to explain, for instance, how the openly gay career of Tennessee Williams existed during the homophobia of the 1950s, or how the Supreme Court's 1986 Bowers v. Hardwick decision (maintaining that same-sex couples do not have a right to engage in consensual sex in private) could be made at a time when gay arts and culture were flourishing in America. Loughery is as mindful of the passage of anti-gay laws as he is of the plots of gay novels and developments in gay theater; as a result, he manages to assemble--with wit and intelligence--a complex and illuminating social history of gay male lives of this century. --Michael Bronski --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Neither as academically rigorous as George Chauncey's Gay New York (1994) nor as entertainingly gossipy as Charles Kaiser's The Gay Metropolis (1997), this broader history nevertheless fills in new swaths of our emerging picture of 20th-century gay life. Although some of Loughery's research will come as old news to readers familiar with the Chauncey and Kaiser books (and lesser-known studies by Jonathan Ned Katz, Allan Berube and John D'Emilio), he includes plenty of unfamiliar material too, for instance, his account of a 1919 plot by then assistant secretary of the Navy Franklin Roosevelt to use sexually enthusiastic sailors as spies and informers on the homosexual population of the Navy base in Newport, R.I. Also here are detailed chronicles of gay demonstrations in Los Angeles, Chicago, New Orleans and Fort Belvoir, Va., that led to New York City's epochal Stonewall riots of 1969. Despite several awkward segues, this freshly assimilated material?along with passages of fertile, personal speculation on possible futures for American sexuality?makes Loughery's study a valuable contribution to the collective portrait of American male homosexuality in our century. Loughery is the art critic of Hudson Review and author of John Sloan: Painter and Rebel. Photos. Author tour.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 544 pages
• Publisher: Holt Paperbacks (June 15, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 080506124X
• ISBN-13: 978-0805061246
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #802,729 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A well-written and interesting book!, April 20, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Other Side of Silence: Men's Lives & Gay Identities - A Twentieth-Century History (Hardcover)

John Loughery has written a highly readable survey of 20th century gay history. It debunks many of the myths surrounding the grand narrative that has been constructed around gay history, meaning that it all started at Stonewall. Particularly interesting to me was his discussion of gay rights activists in the 1950s. He evokes the terror of the McCarthy years well and how courageous those first steps towards gay pride must have been. His incisive exploration of the massive social changes for men and women in the 1930s is also quite interesting. One great strength of the book is the breadth of interviews he uses in the book. You hear the voices of men of all ages from throughout the US. This is what history should be: interesting, funny, a compelling narrative yet complex and challenging. I have learned a lot about 20th Century US history as well. I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in contemporary history.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gay History, U.S. History, September 18, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The Other Side of Silence: Men's Lives & Gay Identities - A Twentieth-Century History (Paperback)

This book has been one of the best history books I have ever read. It is not only complete, but also well written in a very clear style which allowed a non-native english speaker like me to read it without much difficulty.
"The other side of silence" helped me understand the developments of the gay movement in the US, which give us many clues to understand its evolution in other parts of the world.
But I want to stress one particular aspect: Loughery's book is an excellent work of American history. As a non-US citizen, I have learnt a great deal about the evolution of American society in the 20th century. Explaining gay people's lives in the fifties, we get a clear picture of those rather somber postwar years in which suspicion seemed to be the rule. Then, we witness the ideological maelstrom of the 60s and 70s, a manifestation of which was the gay liberation movement in its openly militant version (which is not the birth of this movement, Loughery makes it very clear). Finally we are introduced to new right reaction, new conservatism, and AIDS crisis.
It is precisely its being an excellent book of American History which makes it a brilliant introduction to gay US history. Thanks to this book I have been able to better understand the movements which take place within American society. Those movements which often cause perplexity to a European mind, when confronted to the paradoxical coexistence of sodomy laws, far right influence, on one side, and one of the most active gay communities in the world, on the other.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gay History before and after 1969, April 29, 2000

By 

Steven Bradford (Seattle, WA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Other Side of Silence: Men's Lives & Gay Identities - A Twentieth-Century History (Paperback)

This book is excellent, not just for terrritory that has been well covered before, but especially for revealing the earliest origins of gay life and political movements of the past 70 years in America.